If you only play strong hands pre-flop and prefer shallower stacks post-flop, then your default raise size should be large, perhaps four or five times the big blind. Your raise sizing can reflect your preferred strategy without revealing any additional information about your hand. Others prefer to play many hands when stacks are deep in order to capitalize on the implied odds that weaker players offer. Some people are uncomfortable playing deep-stacked poker post-flop and so adopt a very tight strategy, playing only strong hands and waiting to get more active until the stocks are more shallow relative to the blinds. When done correctly, you can even balance your ranges for various sizes so that your bet sizing is not exploitable.ĭifferent players have different approaches to the early stages of a tournament. You can and should tailor the size of the bet to suit that purpose. Deliberately forfeiting this option is bringing a knife to a gunfight.Įvery bet or raise should have a purpose. The ability to size your bet based on the situation and what you hope to accomplish with the bet is one of the primary factors that distinguishes no-limit from fixed-limit hold ’em. At the very least, you raise sizing ought to take stack depth into account rather than being uniform at a particular blind level regardless of the tournament structure. The average stack size, and presumably your own stack and those of your tablemates, will be very different at the 120/240 blind level in a tournament with starting stacks of 1500 than in a tournament with starting stacks of 3000, 5000, or 7500. Plenty of good tournament players, far more successful than I, use something like standard bet and raise sizes. It’s not my intention to embarrass anyone here. These aren’t quotes from anyone in particular, simply paraphrases of things I’ve heard or seen many times. “What’s your standard raise size at the 120/240 level?” “When there are limpers, I raise three times the big blind plus one big blind for every limper.” I see this discussion from time to time in the tournament forums.

Bet sizing in 13 poker